He also includes the option for running the test as a web page, but that requires a little bit more code. There's also a quick look at how to run a suite of tests from the IDE (as well as in the browser). for more about using SimpleTest, head over to the project's site.

As Zoe Slattery mentions in her new post more testing for PHP is a good thing, but has come with a bit of a problem.

One of the problems with the incredible level of success of the PHP TestFest is that PHP gets more tests, 887 more to be precise. Well, isn't that the point? Yes, but it's beginning to take *forever* to run them which is a bad thing and as TestFests get bigger and better this will only get worse.

As a result, more work has been put into a project started a while back - a tool to allow more than one test to run at once (instead of linearly). This grab shows some of the resulting gains in speed. It jumps to about half to the time to make it through the ~7700 tests.

I don't have a spare computer so I'm not going to discuss performance or show benchmarks. I am talking about ease of use in getting things setup. [...] No, I'm not nearly ready to give up my Linux servers in production and despite Sam Ramji's recent pleas to their open source vendors not to compete on price but compete on value, I can still fail fast and cheap using open source software and operating systems.

A lot of open source developers just don't trust Microsoft, just because.

I am, however, willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. I am part of the slim majority on the above poll who thinks they are sincere. The reason I am willing to give them the benefit of the doubt is not because I believe that the core of Microsoft has changed in any way [...] but because I believe that inside of Microsoft, there are pockets of brilliance.

Check out more of Cal's thoughts on the matter and the results of his "unscientific" polls he mentions in the rest of the post.

Richard Heyes has shared an epiphany he's come up with - a method for running scripts in a web-based environment using lynx.

OK maybe not to you, but it has just occurred to me, and things don't come to me all that fast these days. Cron jobs. [...] You can have a directory inside your webroot called "cron" (imaginative eh?) with scripts in there that are run via cron.

His method uses the cron daemon on the machine to invoke lynx and call the web page through its url. Of course, there are advantages and disadvantages of the method (including having the script open to the world - scary). Be sure to check out the comments for other suggestions from fellow developers.

On php|architect's A/R/T article repository today, there's a new guide written by Sebastian Bergmann - an introduction to PHPUnit.

In the last decade, PHP has developed from a niche language for adding dynamic functionality to small websites to a powerful tool making strong inroads into large-scale, business-critical Web systems. Financial institutions such as banks and insurance companies use PHP, for instance, to develop and maintain solutions for Basel II Credit Rating. Critical business logic like this needs to work correctly. But how do you ensure that it does? You test it, of course.

The tutorial takes a look at how to get started writing tests for your code and how to run those tests against your code to find problems. Sebastian also includes a few of the common misconceptions about unit testing, specifically using PHPUnit to test their apps.

SAP keeps popping up on the PHPradar more and more these days, and this new article from the ITtoolbox site blog explains the situation from a PHP developer's point of view in a SAP-using company (and a few tips to get you started).

So you're a PHP developer and your company is running SAP, the problem though is you have no clue about SAP or what it does - you are curious though. The following are a few tips on making the cross over from building web applications to building SAP based web applications using PHP.

They start with the obvious, finding out what version you're working with, before moving on to the actual development. They link to a few resources for tools to help you make the connections and functionality inside the SAP systems. The simple script they give to test things out just logs you into the system and displays a status for your connection - nice and easy.

HowToForge.com has a new tutorail posted today that aims to show you how to run both PHP4 and PHP5 on a single Apache2 web server.

This tutorial shows how to install and configure Apache2 with PHP5 and PHP4 enabled at the same time. Because it is not possible to run both PHP5 and PHP4 as Apache modules, we must run one of them as CGI, the other one as Apache module. In this document I will use PHP5 as Apache module and PHP4 as CGI, and I will describe the setup for the Linux distributions Debian Sarge (3.1) and Ubuntu 5.10 (Breezy Badger).

I want to say first that this is not the only way of setting up such a system. There are many ways of achieving this goal but this is the way I take. I do not issue any guarantee that this will work for you!

They base the entire installation around Debian, so ideally you're set up on it or have some pretty good knowledge of linux in general. They apt-get install several packages, change some Apache config files, enable some modules, and restart things to get it all set up. The Ubuntu install is just about as easy, wiht only really a few items changed.